Helping hands are always appreciated, but volunteers who carry specialized skills and knowledge are priceless.

Last summer, 28-year-old Will Toler, with an assist from his father, began to use his commercial tax consultant expertise — free of charge — to save the homes of residents struggling with rising property values in Hamilton Park, a historically black northeast Dallas neighborhood.

Six months later, Will’s office phone rings constantly with requests from all over the city. Each case he digs into reveals similar characteristics: lack of an accurate deed, unclaimed exemptions and overvalued property.

The deluge of calls for help has led the Tolers to allow Will to completely step away from the for-profit side of the family company and concentrate for at least a year on the pro bono work. “It’s like being in the Peace Corps — except he gets to live at home,” his dad, Toby, told me this week.

Will’s effort already has expanded into West Dallas, and City Hall contacted the Tolers a few days ago to ask if they also would help in South Dallas.

While Dallas is a big-hearted volunteer community, the Tolers have discovered that few do-gooders are equipped with technical and specialized property tax knowledge. Getting deeds corrected, knowing which exemptions apply and understanding the tax protest process aren’t easy tasks to navigate on a good day.

That’s the gap Will is trying to fill. “The hardest time to know what to do is when you are in a crisis situation,” he said.

Will Toler (left) helped Vicki and Mark Booker with tax issues for their Hamilton Park home.

(Ryan Michalesko/Staff Photographer)

In August, I wrote about Will Toler fighting the tax man on behalf of Hamilton Park resident Belinda Darden, a 64-year-old Walmart baker. Since then, the Tolers have replicated that kind of success for more than 20 more needy families.

That includes Hamilton Park residents Mark and Vicki Booker, who were drowning in property taxes. “We had been able to make the payment for 11 straight months, but there was nothing left over. Sometimes there wasn’t food,” said Mark, a 50-year-old Navy veteran who became disabled due to illness in 2016.

With the couple at their wits’ end, Vicki ran across Will at a fall festival held by the Hamilton Park United Methodist Church. She was there so her grandkids could visit the petting zoo; he had come to distribute tax-help information.

“It’s been a whirlwind of help ever since,” Mark told me. “I can’t imagine what would have happened without Will and his dad.”

The Bookers were facing foreclosure when the Tolers, who live in nearby Lake Highlands, stepped in to help. The Tolers helped Mark secure the disability exemption that he qualified for and documented the condition of the home to get a fair value placed on it.

Initially, Mark wasn’t as welcoming to the Tolers as Vicki was. He questioned their true motives. “But I was wrong,” Mark said. “It was just a beautiful thing. A family working to help others, asking nothing in return.”

Like many homeowners in Hamilton Park, the Bookers have deep roots in the neighborhood, one of the few where black Dallas residents were able to buy new homes in the late 1950s. “These houses aren’t a lot, but our parents went through a lot to be able to afford these houses and qualify to get into here,” Mark said.

While Hamilton Park residents face sharply rising property values, the squeeze in West Dallas — a hotbed of gentrification — is even tighter.

Mark Booker, alongside his dogs Butter (center) and Rick, at his Hamilton Park home Tuesday. "I grew up in this place," Booker said. "This was my mom and dad's house. It's been in the family all my life."

(Ryan Michalesko/Staff Photographer)

Late last year, West Dallas advocate Dolores Sosa Green asked the Tolers to help in her community. The three sat down with other neighborhood leaders and scheduled the first tax-help clinics. This week, Will filed more than 40 valuation appeals with the Dallas Central Appraisal District.

Sosa Green told me she was horrified to realize how unaware residents are regarding their taxes. “The very first meeting we held, at Wesley-Rankin [Community Center], one of the women said, ‘when we get the bill, we just thought we had to pay it without question,’" Sosa Green recalled.

That case is among the many in West Dallas that Will is already trying to fix.

For an outsider — much less a white guy — the road is even bumpier in West Dallas than it has been in Hamilton Park. Sosa Green and others have cautioned Will that he will have to prove himself over and over to people who see developers and speculators swarming their neighborhood

“You are coming into a community that has no trust because of what has happened with the gentrification and development,” Sosa Green said. “They are very cautious, for good reason.”

While plenty of doubters exist, Will’s days are increasingly an unbroken string of phone calls and individual evaluations. “People are coming out of the woodwork in West Dallas,” his father told me. “I don’t know how Will’s going to keep up, but we always do.”

Some of the calls are from folks who want to help the Tolers expand their pro bono effort, including Catholic Charities, the University of North Texas Dallas College of Law and Advocates for Community Transformation. Volunteers are stepping up to help translate. Readers 2 Leaders has donated Will a bit of office space in West Dallas.

Next month, the Dallas League of Women Voters will honor Will Toler with its “champion volunteer recipient” award at its annual Susan B. Anthony event. But he didn’t need the recognition to know he’s making a difference. “We’re killing it,” he regularly tells his dad.

But he maintains that he is benefiting more than his pro bono clients. He’s gained a sense of purpose he never felt while working on the for-profit side of the Toler Company.

“It’s affirmed that a lot of the things my parents taught me is true,” he said. “Show up, understand that people need your help, try hard and be honest about what you tell them.”